Psycho Trailer

To boost my knowledge on horror movies, I decided to evaluate one of the most famous horror movies in history; Psycho.

Story
I believe that the trailer really keeps the viewer's interest well. I conclude so because of the idea of having a character being haunted by the Psycho in a closely abandoned motel. It shows that characters will be able to get no help because of the isolation. Also, in the beginning the narrator suggests the viewers that its a quiet motel, which builds up suspiciousness since the motel is too quiet. It already gives first impressions of chaos, and the viewers still don't know what they'll be expecting until later on in the video, and when we don't know something, our curiosity strengthens and drags us further in, so the viewers will carry on watching the trailer to find out what is really wrong with the motel. In addition, it gives the audience the idea of where the story is set and at what location will all the action take place.

The use of little effects in the trailer have given it its plainness. Obviously back in 1960s not much effect could be achieved but keeping the video simple doesn't overcrowd the important information showed to the audience, and the less effect there is used in the video, the more it will appear to be real, especially when the story is realistic.

The outline of the story is relatively easy to follow because the editors have included only the important bits that will help summarise the story. With the use of fading-to-black transition, it helps the audience to understand which clips belong to what scene and easily pick up the visualised information.

Picture
I think that the movie trailer of Psycho really serves an impact towards its audience. At the very beginning there are several close-up shots of details that can suggest murder. There are white flashes between them to show transition between each shot and keep them separated. They also match the rhythm of the soundtrack that is used in the background (BGM), so it shows that the clips are in harmony with the music.

The colour of the trailer is black and white, and I think that it's sometimes difficult to visualise a murder without the red, or cause fear. Alternatively, I think that the black and white don't express much bright emotions, which is a good effect on the audience because the aim of the trailer is to build up tension and cause fear for the audience, and I think that black and white film allows the audience to watch the movie within the dark atmosphere that is caused by the plain colours used to create this mood.

The modulation in the trailer is very well thought through in my opinion. The soundtrack is eerie and is quieter than the narration for the audiences' to listen carefully to what is being said, and when tension is being built up, there is a sudden switch of soundtracks at certain points to not interrupt either sections of the sounds for a clean transition. The first soundtrack is quieter than the second one, and also the soundtrack it is transitioned to is faster in tempo to really enhance the action that is going on.

BGM: at the beginning there are sudden sounds of the violins as I believe. The sound effects created are very sharp and dramatic, and really add to the tension being built up with the short clips at the very beginning. With the soundtrack being peculiar-like, it really fits in with the storyline because there's suspicion being built up every time there's information revealed about the strange things going on around the motel, and to fit with this consequence, the instruments used in the soundtrack also suggest suspicion.

There's also been some sudden sound effects involved to enhance sudden scenes to increase the fear in the audience. For example, in the end you have one of the characters speaking calmly, which is suppose to relax the audience after the trailer. But unexpectedly there's a kind of jump scare with a shot of a man with an evil smile on his face looking towards the audience. The entrance of this mid-shot from black is a flash of white so it really catches the audiences' attention. Also, the instruments sound like they're reversed, or maybe they were played to gain that effect, and I think it really gives it that demonic feel to the shot.

The speed in the trailer really enhances the link between the clips and the background music. Where the music speeds up, so do the transitions of the shots, or the amount of action taking place within the shot. When there's calmer music, there are often shots with fewer action commonly along with the speech of characters for audience to pick up clearer. I think that when the shots are only a few seconds long, it really teases the audiences and makes them want to continue watching the trailer to see what will happen next. It also builds up the anxiety created in the audience because they can only pick up few information that can suggest signs of murder but don't get enough detail to give everything away, and I think this type of effect really works for a movie trailer because it's purpose is to convince viewers to go and watch the movie because of their interest in it.

Function
The way the editors send the message of the killer across to their viewers is often by quoting from the scenes of movies. The speeches given by the characters often give clues to who the Psycho could be or what he/she is like. There is also a narrator that talks about where the location is set, in this case a 'quiet motel'. But we are told that it has actually become a 'scene of a crime'. This tells the audience that it used to be a quiet place to stay but now something has triggered for the motel to become a dangerous place. The motel is also isolated; we are told this when the woman character finds out that they have 12 available vacancies, meaning that the motel is not a popular place to stay, and this tells us that there's things wrong with the fact that it's scarcely populated. Additionally, a man is quoted saying 'place looks  like its hiding from the world', which can suggest the viewers that the 'crime' of the scene is trying to hide its murder from witnesses. These are the first signs of the Psycho after quick clips of the Shower scene.

Another fact that is supported by a quote to suggest danger is when the owner of the motel talks about visitors being all in their 'private traps'. It shows that visitors who come to stay can never escape, and this really adds to the fear because people will always be attempting to escape for their lives but from the Psycho, there's not a chance.

A third evidence for the Psycho is when a man asks the owner of the motel if anyone's at home, and the owner tells him it must be his mother. This perhaps builds up suspicion, and maybe suggests that he's the son of the Psycho. But the actual Psycho is himself, and these suggestions take the idea of the woman away from him, making it a great get away or excuses for his crimes.

The way the title is presented in the end and isn't revealed at the beginning requires for the audience to continue watching 'til the end to find out what the movie's called. The font used for the title is horror-like with gore/grunge distinctive to suggest that the storyline is not pretty. It can also suggest that the characters in the movie associated with Psycho have suffered and the scars could be reflected in the font. Also, there are effects of blotches of blood belonging to the victims. This colouration of black, white and red are typical of those of a murdered, with the grayscale setting up the eerie mood, and the red signifying blood and danger. There's also the effect of zooming in on the title, which can suggest that the Psycho is heading towards the audience and make them feel like they're the next victim.

Thinking About Fear

In this task we were to write down what we fear, why we are scared of it, and how it has triggered to fear the stressful stimulus. I learned that my group's fears are drowning, heights and Slender, but I don't think there's ways of linking them together to form a very good story for my upcoming horror trailer. I could look at a single fear and dig deeper to find out ways to turn the fear into a story, but I don't think I'm quite ready to move onto this stage because I'll need some research and even before that I'll need to have everything planned out.

I can use the information we have written down about why we fear to interpret the reasons into the story so I can gain the effect of fear in my horror trailer. I can also use the ways it has triggered us to be scared of our fears because usually in horror trailers you build up the fear and something has to trigger it at the beginning so if I get to understand the ways people are caused to fear the stimulus, I'll be able to achieve a better storyboard.

We decided to put down any films or games we could relate to our fears to perhaps look at for ideas and inspiration. 

Research: Fear

Fear is made up of chain reactions in our brains that begin with a stressful stimulus and ends with the liberation of chemicals. Most common consequences are a sprinting heart, rapid breathing and energised muscles. This reaction is often called the fight-or-flight response. 

Within our greatly complex brain is a knotty network of communications amongst the billions of nerve cells. Here is where any sense, thought or action begins. In some cases, the communications result to mindful thought and action. But almost all responses are entirely autonomic; we don’t happen to knowingly trigger it or understand what occurred until it has ended.

There are two responses to fear: the low road, and the high road.

The low road is the idea of 'taking no chances'. If there's something the person is triggered by to fear, they'll begin having different thoughts, with the assumption of danger being weaker if they believe in something that is a dangerous trigger, but really turns out to be anything ordinary. So, say there was a knock on the door, the person will believe in the fact that it's a burglar when really it's the wind causing the stimulus. They won't assume the other way, believing that it's the wind when really a burglar is breaking into the house.

The high road includes more thought. Where the low road initiates the fear response just in case, high road will consider all options; is it a burglar or is it a wind? With the knock on the door being the stimulus, the high road will begin asking questions like have they experienced this particular situation before? What did it mean that time? They'll begin looking for clues to prove if its the wind or if its really an intruder.

The stimulus (knocking on the door) will cause both roads to follow up at the same time, but the high road will take longer, explaining a moment of terror you experience before recovering.

Main Task : Set Brief

The titles and opening of a new teen horror film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), wit the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

Preliminary Task: Evaluation

What did you learn from the experience of filming the footage required for your preliminary task? What went well and what could have ben done better?

I have learnt that when filming, you should get your pre-production right before beginning to film. During the filming, we didn't have our storyboard, so we had to do all the scenes from our heads and some of us disagreed with others. You should also be aware of the time you have on your hands because we began to run out of it and had to film most footage very quickly. Because we rushed, we made a lot of mistakes like members of our group showing up in reflections or round the corners.

In this screenshot we can see part of John's arm round the edge of the doors on the left

We ended up using a room we didn't plan to film in and it was a big mistake. It had bad lighting, and the room was taken with staff that managed to get into a few scenes.

I think that next time when it gets to filming, we'll be using a shot list to have our production much more organised and achieve the results we truly wanted. I have really learnt how vital the production part is. 

What is the difference between pre-production, production and post-production?

Pre-production is where the planning is done before moving on to the production. It can involve things like creating a storyboard (to order the shots, decide on camera angles, camera shots, etc), planning your shot locations, casting your actors for your video, etc.

Production is the filming section, where you use your planning as a guide to achieve the shots you planned for.

Post-production is the progress of using all the media you encountered during the production, like raw footage, and editing together to achieve a video that, when put all together, makes sense to the audience. 

How easy did you find editing in iMovie? Explain at least 4 different skills or techniques that you learnt during this process.

At some points, I found iMovie very easy to use, and at other times I just got frustrated. One of the different skills that I did learn was the ken burn. It's when you have the choice to achieve the effect of zooming in or out, or sliding from left to right, and vice versa. It's a pretty cool feature of iMovie but it has its boundaries of how much you can zoom in, which was the downside. I wished to zoom in much further for the EastEnders part (credits) in the end to really imitate the show but I couldn't go past the limit of zooming closer than iMovie offers. 

Another skill I have learnt is the colour adjustments. iMovie offers changes like the exposure, levels etc. and I think it's a great feature of iMovie if you're not satisfied with the colouring of your raw footage. But we filmed using an iPad and the footage came out pixelated or not HD enough to show high quality changes in the colouring. 

So to overcome the issue of colour adjustments on the raw footage, I chose the 'auto' option, where iMovie makes slight changes to the clips that are slightly visible but don't show the very extreme distortion to the pixels. 

The transitions were great techniques to improve my editing because iMovie offers a good variety of different ways to change from one scene to another. But I wish to have more options at editing the transitions themselves, say the 'dissolve' transition; I'd like for it to not just fade from one clip to another but have the clips also dissolve in a subtractive way for more effect. But I guess it was best to keep this movie simple and not overload it with effects because it's more of a cinematic kind rather than artistic.

I also gained some skills at working with the text. You get the option of choosing the types of text from the range of readily-made text templates that iMovie has. I think you can do very little with the text, just change the font, colour, and the alignment of it. I think it would improve my experience with iMovie if you were able to edit more with the text, say you'd like the text to slide in but also blur, and you can't combine both texts together. But iMovie is a basic editing program and is kept simple, and I believe I have set my expectations pretty high for a software offering this little.

What is continuity editing?

Continuity editing is where all scenes flow smoothly and the order of the shooting makes sense. For example; 

At first, we have the character sitting at a mid-shot, ready for her dialogue..

..afterwards she's talking to the character where we can see over the shoulder that she's still in the same position, so she hasn't moved between the filming and the audience can't tell that the scenes were cut to match and make sense.

What do the following terms mean; a) match on action, and b) shot / reverse shot

a) Match on action is a technique used when editing for continuity editing. It is when one shot cuts to the next, representing the action in the first shot. This creates continuity because the action being carried on from one shot to another draws the viewers away from the fact that the raw footage was cut at certain areas to be put together to make sense. 

b) Shot reverse shot also links to the continuity editing, where conversations between characters looking at each other is used. The camera is looking over the shoulder of one character and looking at the other opposite. It then switches to the character opposite and is looking over their shoulder, focusing on the character the camera was previously looking over shoulder. This often includes the 180 degree rule, where the continuity is retained by not distorting the sense of location of the characters in the shots. 

Analyse your preliminary task as a piece of continuity editing. What are its strengths and what are its weaknesses.

I had to crop a few footage to avoid mistakes but I ended up with bad quality footage. One of these mistakes was that the doors (on the right) were opened when the character was approaching them, and on the next scene they were closed. This means it doesn't make any sense for the audience, leaving them confused.

Door on the far right opened..

..then in the following shot, the door appears to be closed.

I think our clips were very long and I didn't want to have the audience watch the character walk for 10 seconds. I managed to speed up the clips slightly, but I had to trim them to make them shorter. I made sure the scenes were edited in the correct sequence but it didn't achieve the match-on action that I was aiming for.

Another issue was the shaky videoing. Because we were filming using iPads by hand, we couldn't get our shots steady, especially when we had to achieve different camera angles. I managed to overcome this problem by editing the clips to smoothen the stability of the shots. This caused a few clips to be magnified by few percentage to reduce the amount of optimisation iMovie had to make. With this, my clips became poorer quality and if I was to zoom out, the clip could become a bit twitchy. I believe it's because iMovie can't stabilise the clip fully, perhaps the clip being heavy with movement. 

I think the music went well because it's all cheery and I think the way the character moved matched the mood of the song. I also edited the clips to the beat of the song, so the scenes changed on that certain beat. But I'm not satisfied with the way I faded out the song before the tension. I think to improve this issue, I would've added like a broken record before the sound effect I added for the tension when Dr. Interrupt (Emily) turns around to face her patient (Jerin).

Other sound effects I used was the bling for when Jerin smiles. I froze that certain frame of the clip because her smile was actually not part of our storyboard and it went onto behind the scenes and I couldn't include that in the production. I zoomed in using the ken burns effect for her smile and to go with that, I added a fade to white transition between the clip and the frozen frame to indicate the flicker of her teeth and enhance the bling sound effect.

I decided to add a transition at the beginning to introduce the first scene in a fun way. The transition unfolds the 3 divided parts one after another. I thought this would match the text I added. It has half of  it move from left to centre, and the other half from right to centre, eventually joining and creating the title. I thought using 2 different colours (white and red) for the text would give it a more of an interesting welcome to the audience. I think it also makes the text stand out more than just plain white because the establishment shot has pale colours.